On one of my trips to Italy we were on Highway A14, the auto strada that runs between Rimini and Bologna. It was on a Sunday evening in the month of July, and the traffic coming back from the coast (Rimini is on the Adriatic Sea) was bumper-to-bumper...

Salad pizza, or pizza insalata, has so much going for it I often wonder why more restaurants don’t offer it. Obviously, pizza insalata is not a style of pizza that you would want to deliver, but it works great as a lunch option or as a dinner a...

Say hello to the family of “little cakes” better known as tortelli, tortellini, and tortelloni. Tortelli looks like a stretched out ravioli (a specialty of Parma, Italy). Tortellini is a small ring-shaped pasta that is filled with me...

The way I see it, Asian food ranks in the top three most popular cuisines. My ranking order goes like this: Italian, Mexican, Asian (factoring in the popularity of sushi). I am sure there are those that would debate this with me. What about Indian, F...

Canadian bacon is not bacon at all –– it is ham. Canadian bacon is made from the ribeye of the pork loin (eye of the loin). In the United States, pork belly becomes the cut most often used to make Canadian bacon. In Canada, Canadian bacon...

I suppose it would be ridiculous of me to say that the two most important ingredients in that delicious antipasti called prosciutto and melon are actually the prosciutto and melon! It’s not that ridiculous, actually, because it really does matt...

Most of the time Carpaccio is associated with beef, as in thin slices of raw beef, veal or even tuna. The name comes from Vittore Carpaccio, the Venetian Rennaissance painter who, as history points out, favored the use of red and white in his paintin...

Baked ziti is a great do-it-ahead pasta dish that is loaded with gusto. It can be made ahead and held for two to three days (in the cooler, covered) and the flavor will actually intensify. There are several ways to portion and serve this dish. You ca...

We’ve all seen those menus in restaurants –– Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese — where the heat level of certain dishes is marked by a small chile symbol. Usually, one chile is mild, two chiles means hot and three chiles, we...

Ever since the first BBQ Chicken pizza hit the scene in the 1980’s, consumers have gone stir crazy over it. Since then barbecue sauce has gone from an oddity to a regular on pizzeria menus. It makes a fantastic pizza base and provides regular c...

Menu Development Chill Out Salads are moving year ‘round these days By Jeremy White, Editor in Chief It’s February, traditionally one of the coldest months of the year in much of the United States, and many of your customers are thinking ...

5 pounds butternut squash, deseeded and roasted 2.5 medium onions, diced 1/3 cup garlic, chopped 5 carrots, julienned 1/3 teaspoon nutmeg 1 ¼ quarts heavy cream 3 bay leafs 1 ounce fresh thyme, chopped 78 ounces chicken stock 2.5 ounces butter...